Sorry if this is the wrong place for it, I looked but I didn't see anywhere in particular for suggestions or discussing potential game mechanics.
Something that always bothered me when I played EQ was that NPCs of opposing factions who were in dire situations, one of the handful of other races enslaved at the Crushbone encampment, for example, would still attack you on sight even though they were in no position to be turning down potential help, let alone attacking and trying to kill it. Will Pantheon address this so that NPCs in similar situations would have some sort of exception to the normal faction rules, where their lowest 'hate' could be apprehensive unless otherwise provoked? I feel like it would make things more realistic, as well as make it so that players of an 'evil' or otherwise opposed faction could have a slightly easier time getting on the good side of the factions of said NPC.
It was a little too black-and-white in EQ sometimes. Your example is very good. An ogre slave would likely have much different allegiences and views than an ogre tribe member.
It would be interesting to see situation and other factors 'overcome' strict faction where and when appropriate and not require 1000s of hours of grinding for *any* interaction with 'opposing' faction members.
Beefcake said:If you were in World War II and in a Japanese prison, would you accept help from a Nazi wandering by?
If I were in a Japanese prison, being run by the Japanese after I got caught by the Japanese? And being helped by a Nazi? I may as well give it a shot. I don't know if the Nazi is an infiltrator or not trying to destroy the camp from the inside
...Except your example isn't comparible to mine. When an Iksar, Dark Elf, Ogre, etc. wanders into Crushbone, it's to kill orcs. Only to kill orcs. There is no other reason. They aren't allied. And any of the slaves can easily see one of those races actively killing the slavers. If a Nazi wanders into a Japanese PoW camp, it probably isn't to kill the Japanese.
Edit: In short, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend."
The enemy of my enemy is as likely as not to also be my enemy - but if I am in a Japanese prison camp I would have to consider how much I had to lose. Also how much I had to gain.
If I thought - rightly or wrongly - I had a real chance of staying alive to be sent home in an exchange or after the war ended, a 90% chance of getting killed trying to escape might not look all that good. If it was a death camp where the odds on being murdered or dying from mistreatment were quite good - the answer might be otherwise. Japanese were known for treating prisoners very badly - not because they were monsters but because their culture looked very negatively at anyone who urrendered or was captured and did not then honorably kill himself. I don't know too much about the orc codes for treating prisoners - I always assumed it was something like "try not to let the meat rot".
I agree with the OP in general but so much depends on the culture of the prisoner - and whether he or she has any hope of escape. Perhaps killing me will earn some rewards from the captors. Perhaps it is a pleasant change from slaving away - and there is no hope of escape because the camp is hundreds of miles from any border and an escaped ogre is rather ...obvious. Perhaps judgment by the Gods depends on how many enemies you kill and adding one more to the list is a priceless treasure given the lack of other opportunities. Perhaps death in battle is honorable and the ogre is just as happy if I kill him or her. The orcs might just beat the crap out of him or her and slap the chains back on.
Haha...this forum does that sometimes. I agree with you Izzic. If I was a slave and two groups I hated were killing each other, then I would do nothing. But then again the indepth part gets put in the system anyways. If I decided to help the people that enslaved me, do I get treated better by getting better food and less hours working...etc. I think with the disposition system being put into the game you will probably see different types of behavior among the same race in a situation like that.
For a named NPC I'd agree with you. It could be a quest related thing, or the start of a quest or what have you. They turn on their rescuer because they don't think they have a chance of ever actually escaping and would rather grasp at the potential of being rewarded than the, to them, inevitability of dying trying to escape.
But for the common, nameless NPC? "An Elven slave" or "A Dwarven slave"? It wouldn't make sense to me. Nameless NPCs, as rough as it sounds, are essentially XP and faction fodder. And throwing in that 'unique' quirk where some races will turn on you when you rescue them, when you're trying to improve your reputation with that race/faction, is detrimental to the play experience. It's wasting your time not only because you didn't get the reward you were expecting, but it's further wasting your time by potentially lowering your factions you wanted to raise when you end up having to kill said NPC.
I suspect NPC Dispositions and Behaviors (read more here: http://pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2019_march_behind_the_design/) will enable the kind of experience you describe, Izzic.
Izzic said:It's wasting your time...because you didn't get the reward you were expecting.
Not getting what you expect is one of the biggest differences between a game and a skinner box. Personally, I hope we get systems that create logical, consistent, and unexpected interactions with NPCs.
OP brings up a good point.
I think that this isn't a faction issue it's a design issue. When the “prisoner” NPC’s were put into the game, the developer handling that should have adjusted the faction to make those characters slightly different.
I agree with you that from a roleplaying perspective it makes no sense that they would attack.
It did bug me a little that it was NPC vs. PC a lot of the times in EQ. Why would a slave attack me when i was killing the slaver? I can imagine the slavers ordering them to do so, but there was no lore script stating such. I hope the dispositions help to fix these black and white issues. Or there is lore added to explain why.
Izzic said:God damn, guys, can we just talk about video games? There doesn't need to be an in-depth, racial lore to how an NPC responds to being rescued from slavery. I just thought it would make more sense for someone being rescued to NOT stab the rescuer in the spleen, Christ.
When I said stockholm syndrome I was trying to be funny in an over-the-top way by using the smallest response, for added irony.
But otherwise, yes.
Manouk said:When I said stockholm syndrome I was trying to be funny in an over-the-top way by using the smallest response, for added irony.
But otherwise, yes.
No, no, you were fine. I totally understood what you were getting at. My complaints were directed at the people who keep trying to compare video game mechanics to actual, real life scenarios where things are a million times more complicated.
Shai said:Not getting what you expect is one of the biggest differences between a game and a skinner box. Personally, I hope we get systems that create logical, consistent, and unexpected interactions with NPCs.
As I said to someone else before, I would agree in certain circumstances. But for the very lowest, trivial, repeatable quest that doesn't even have a quest giver, where the target NPC doesn't even have a name, it's just a thing you can do repeatedly in-zone? Rescuing a slave, in this instance. There's no reason for the player to be punished for trying to grind faction. By all means, for the bigger, or hell, even slightly moderate 'actual' quests, throw in those twists and turns! But for low tier faction grinding it would not be good for the player.
A similar example would be if you were mining ore for crafting, but occasionally the ore vein would just explode, damaging you and yielding no ore. In fact, the explosion ruptured your bag and you lost a small amount of ore you had mined previously. It doesn't explode frequently enough for you to lose more ore than you gain if you just kept mining, but the fact that it happens at all would be irritating to the player and make them seek other means of finding crafting materials. It was a trivial interaction with an expected outcome, but an unexpected result ends with the player in frustration for time and resources lost and less likely to find attepting the same interaction enjoyable. Once bitten, twice shy.
Shai said:I suspect NPC Dispositions and Behaviors (read more here: http://pantheonmmo.com/newsletter/2019_march_behind_the_design/) will enable the kind of experience you describe, Izzic.
Gave it a quick read, thank you for the link! But while I do like the idea of these, I don't believe this will have any bearing on the specific scenario I'm talking about. Not unless there's going to be tags that have an effect on an NPCs faction 'perception'. But despite that 'A Friendly slave' or 'A Hopeful slave' would look incredibly silly, and 'A Violent slave' and 'A Cowardly slave' could be tags you would very easily and quickly recognize to avoid, there comes another issue with this. Eventually, all the 'A Friendly slave' and 'A Hopeful slave' will have been freed. Leaving only the slaves with tags that indicate they will turn on you and attack you when you release them. How do you get rid of these hostile slaves without lowering your faction by killing them so that the friendly ones can respawn? The only answers I can see are:
A) By freeing them and letting them attack you first, killing them won't result in a faction hit. But this still has the problem of wasting the player's time, because the player must then go to each hostile slave in turn and take the time to gather the keys needed to free them, and then kill each and every one of them.
B) There is a scripted timer that will result in a hostile mob wandering by and killing the slave for their own enjoyment, or for the displeasure of the slave not working hard enough, etc. But this still wastes the player's time, because not only would the player have to wait for the hostile slaves to be 'culled', they may be late to rescue a friendly slave who is then killed before they have the chance to free them and reap the faction reward. An additional problem to this is that there comes an issue with a 'no touching allowed' mob having to wander the zone. A mob that it is frowned upon to kill because it is performing a function necessary to clear unneeded or unwanted NPCs from the zone for new ones to spawn in. Players who don't know what this mob does may kill it because 'obviously it's the bad guy and we need to kill the bad guys' and it will frustrate experienced players who were counting on that mob doing its duty and waiting on it to clear hostile slaves.
And then there's the roleplaying aspect to the B) point. Sitting and watching and waiting for 'the wrong slave' to be killed so that the 'right' one can spawn in would, I imagine, sit very wrong with many roleplayers who want to be on the good side of things. But the player knows that saving that slave will just result in an unneccessary fight, so there's a big, immersion breaking conflict there.
Kastor said:I'm sure they could code to turn faction off for those slave NPCs. But beef cake brings up a good point. Thank one of your enemies for saving you from another? Or turn on them? Lol
Lol but it's really not the most basic instinct of anything is to survive, so I'm sure if you realized you were being rescued and sent free I'm sure you'll just go with the flow and escape asap and never look back because you want to live, not wonder if this person is releasing me of my bonds just so he can hurt/kill/capture me, if that was the case why would he even bother taking them off in the first place